The Lie

America has bought the lie that the market place will solve all the ills of society. It has been defrauded by this confidence trick, this brazen formulation from the most piratical inflection of Wall Street and the corporate sphere. That the self-serving orb of high finance would ever volunteer to fix a social disease or problem is as likely as an elephant piloting an aeroplane. Yet this is not only political orthodoxy but the most very virulent Anglo-Saxon strain of private-capital thought. For this reason a legitimate left, or a European style left would fail in America because it goes against the culture as well as the politics. Only 'a fair shake' poem aligned with a true left force could ever have a chance, and even then its scope would be limited.

And so that virulent strain has mutated into Donald Trump. A man who understands culture and media more than politics, a man who is not very far from a goon, a man who is more the head of an ochlocracy than the president of the voter of sober judgement. Not for Trump is the slow and careful Swede. This election, among many things, was also an election between Dionysos and Apollo. And the laughing grimace of the mad, dancing drunk, won. Thus confirmed is the disease, the virus. The virus of legitimized greed, the confirmation of poverty, the stratification of people, the arrangement of quality and capital. This is the result of any society that puts money at the centre and not ideas. A few people benefit now from money but, everyone, always will benefit from good ideas. Donald Trump will expand the remit of what money can do and will assail on the wellbeing of millions. If history will remember him, it won't be for kind reasons.

And what kind of vigorous opposition is there? There are mealy-mouthed murmurings. Let the con-artist govern, they say. Give the most diseased, selfish money-grabber the chance to rule. This is no more an opposition than saying nothing as you are being robbed. The political class and their pundits wind on. When anyone winds on, windy in their speech, a solid breaking of the wind is the only decent response.

The liberal left is too busy deciding if it should be 'manhole' or 'person-hole' to be rallying against crypto-fascism. Relativism has dissected the very language they need to post a solid defense or mount a stout attack. If all language can be interpreted any which way than no words have meaning and all words have no meaning. This abnegates the purpose of language as a means of communication. It quite possibly nullifies thought. Words must have meaning and they should have a precise meaning. If we cannot quantify things then we cannot understand anything. All leads out from that. If the liberal left think to defend the ever-increasing meaninglessness of objects and defeat the most libertarian and libertine promises of capitalism, then they must possess a power unknown to history. That is possible but its certainly not a decent or honorable position. The liberal left is post-modernism taken to its logical conclusion and so has concluded the liberal left.

And what of the radical left? The angry left? The left that calls a spade, not an earth moving object operated by an individual possessing mammalian qualities and by their own will, but simply, a spade. It is understood that if the crazy right has not only defeated the sensible right, but the sensible left then the radical left has some prospect. And this has explained to a degree the rise of Bernie Sanders,  a man more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president because moral, social, political and philosophical experience is deeper than public office or title. This left has more legitimacy because it derives its power from the foot of suffering in the state, and thats where sits the just seat of government. And Bernie has lit a fire with plain speaking. He has lit a fire under the soles of feet destined otherwise never to march. And they have sung a sweet song. Maybe dear Bernie can win. Maybe he can shoot for the moon and get it. And maybe America could inch closer to the just state, where ideas rule not men and their money. Or maybe not. Que sera sera.

There also remains an iron-faced fact. If all seven billion people had the middle-class life of the average American, a middle-class existence in decline, than we would need four planets worth of resources, not to mention four atmospheres, to effect it. This has two implications: 1/ Either we must lower our expectations of being middle-class or 2/ keep two-thirds of humanity in poverty. The latter surely cannot be the stated position of a forward thinking mind. Which means we must work on the former. Our society is long on things and short on ideas, precisely because money is the centre of the argument, not ideas. And money is thing. Money is greed codified, poverty confirmed and power consecrated. Unless we rise above its gravity, its thralldom of the primitive brain and our weakness for primordial rule, we may not survive.

What we must do is decide that there exist a thing called the dignity of man and that that it belongs to everyone. And that it will be defended against the egregious privations of the market place. It will be defended against the wool-minded brains of the liberal left. That it will be defended against the tyranny-creep of foreign despots. That it will be defended against self-defeat, and the anarchy of the religio-fascists. That it will be defended against the internet, a thing as yet that is high on knowledge but low on culture, a thing that awaits sentience as the primordial ooze awaited single-celled organisms. And yet everyone knows it. This project may appear too heavy and really should be buried, but it keeps recurring and so we must answer it. We should answer it honestly rather than with craven procrastination.

A wise man once said that only a fool learns from his own mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. We have known for a good long while that that Anglo-Saxon virus was unsustainable. Not only are we to repeat those mistakes, but we are to fail to learn from our own. Thus we are worse than fools. Old Europe looks on and weeps. We have anchored ourselves to a doctrine that only guarantees poverty. Worse than this it sponsors the rich, gives them welfare. Is this the just city? What happened to the seat of Lincoln? The pen of Jefferson? The courage of Washington? Usurped. Stolen by money. And by the con-artists. And America, too stupid to save itself, lays the machines out for its own torture. Plaudite omnes.

Therefore we must rally. We must march. We must stand. We must fight. We must resist. We must not let what little that separates stop us from mounting a defense. We must join in what we have deepest in common to square us up for the fight. We must neither let the thralldom of money distract, nor trinkets nor favor dissuade. Ours is the right and dignity, and it is maintained only with strong defenses.

Europa

Europe is not just an idea, it's an identity. It's not just a place but a promise, a promise of the cosmopolitan and the international in all its essence, its concentrated form. It's the promise of 740 million to co-existed merrily, fraternally, peacefully in spite of millennia of battle. 28 countries live in the hope of a common life and sweet citizenship. It is not a petty project. It carries the hope of mankind. If man can thrive here, it raises the bar, sets the world ablaze with political ambition. And indeed union is the rage. African Union, North American Union, Eurasian Union, union is the means where we show our human selves, where what hurts someone over there affects us over here. Where the interest is in all people and not one nation above another, one away from any other. Where we look at each other as brothers in the sweet web of existence, naked to the vast universe, and not exercising power by incendiary action and retarding, backward thinking. Content of character, not color of skin. If my African brother is sad, I'm sad too. If a poor begging girl in Mumbai taps my hand for bread, pathos is my brother. If the wretched die young, they die on your witness.

That is why Europe matters. It is the promise to the world of what it should live like. Of all humanity it is its expectation; Its right to live like. There is no reason why the world can't live like Europe. And no reason why it shouldn't. Except that reason doesn't rule in the majority of the world. Given what we know, we cry bootless prayers to the moon when we see ignorance and stupidity reign high. We say, 'if only they knew'. And our souls flutter. If only they could see... And yet still there's no reason against all living like the European.

And so the European project is not just for the Europeans but for all man, all society. It is the model. And so when the cynics bite like sharks, they must examine their conscience to see if they are the opposite to argument, or just the passionate from ignorance. Or against humanity. Or really against themselves. 

Europe never was one country, so why should one country bring it down? 

It won't. It can't. It never has. With trepidation we say it never will. And so the life of the human keeps its dignity. Sweet old Europe, preserver's of dignity. Thus those who supported Brexit have won a pyrrhic victory. They have won a victory for the sclerotic, the stupid, the ignorant. They call it sovereignty. But what brother shuts the gate to his own? Turn your back on the world, and, as Chesterton says, it turns its back on you. How stupid is all this madness? Beyond the stupid. And what does the student of it conclude? That Europe will survive and that it doesn't depend on any one European country for it to survive.

Let that old harmony play. Let that union be. Let it be recorded that humans fight for justice, fraternity and the common life. Let not the selfish and the stupid be the megaphones of the human spirit. Let rivers of love rush on. Embrace your fellow. To those that oppose such a tendency, yours is the tragic victory. There, you win the prize of the joy of self-obsession and the hurt of self-flagellation. Enjoy your wounds. Enjoy your scars. Enjoy your distance. Enjoy your distance from the beauty of embrace. 'Good riddance Britain', they will say. 'Good riddance Europe', will be your reply? But Britain will lose more. Because Britain must lose more. Britain will suffer. But Europe must be open. And should the sulking baby of Britain, stupid in its people, want to play the prodigal, Europe will let that old scene play and sacrifice the fatted calf. Happy in the welcome of a wayward son. And welcomed back Britain would be. But ye gads of decency, preserve, why let such insults manifest? And why should Europe ever forget?

And so the isolationists sell a double lie. That they can deliver better and that they can defend sovereignty. They are charlatans who don't know history. They are trinket men who sell stollen goods. They can never understand the dignity of man. They are one idea's men. They are fascists because they cannot think otherwise. They cannot think beyond their own heartless primitive gratification. They are the reflex of the presumptive. Sovereignty rests in the deepest caves of men, not one place or the other.

Trinkets are shiny. Beer is cheap. A good time is a few pieces of money away. Is this to be the standard? Well no. Not by a good long way. Because old Europe has come to compact. And whether Britain accepts terms or no, is of supreme indifference. And what old Europe teaches with touching pathos is that if you fight for it, you get it; If you fight for it, you get it. You get it by long fashion. And no power will molest. Because no power of one state can tell the other 27 what to do, or hold them to ransom. The populists will lose in the long run. They will pass. And so Britain will lose. A too proud union rejecting the most successful union, is not our world full of irony?  

Thus I, for one, want it to be known that I reject British policy. I defy it. I am European and no one May tell me otherwise. So I defy the stupid who have 'risen' up? Go back to your caves and melt into the rocks. Descend back to the vegetation where you belong. Huffing and puffing is your basic practice, don't disturb the intelligent with your nonsense. Huts are your houses. Go dwell there. The dialectic is beyond you, the debate is a side-show to you. Leave off and return to your straw dwellings. I defy the authority that strips me of the right. And I defy the history, the bone-hardened legacy that says only some in Britain are entitled to good education. No, in sweet old Britain, in dear old Britain they would never have voted the rod for their own backs if they all had good education. 

And there lies the rub. In England the culture proclaims nothing about education being a way to escape poverty, when the truth is education is the only way to escape it, to tunnel out from low to high. And so poverty is chief in a country that should know better. And yet England has education enough to know better. Education for a few means nothing, it is in the long deleterious. Education is a right, not privilege extended. If all can't be well educated, then the state is not very smart. And I will clash swords with any who thinks otherwise.

We are hopeful, and we are fearless knowing that the dear face of Europa is pleasant enough to welcome back a recalcitrant fool.

Demokratia

Democracy is in the minority and always has been through out history. Ponder the irony of that sentence for a moment. An aberration in the ancient Hellenic peninsular surrounded by city state autocracies and empires, land masses ruled from citadel and democracy didn't emerge anywhere until modernism. This idea is in the minority in space and time, like a piratical crew surviving by wits in a sea that seldom likes how you think. In the catalogue of human past, democracy was the minority form of society. Even today most of humanity lives not in democracy. And there's nothing, especially given these facts, that suggest it ever will be. Let that sober consideration give you pause. Let also, its fragility concentrate your mind.

Let also the sober fact that prosperity is also in the minority, that most of history has been history of mass poverty, starvation, war and Bacchic-born judgement by a few, or by one. Let then the fool who today murmurs petty, cynical disquiet be struck cold by the pitiless oblivion in our history, and always dormant in our bones. Let not hubris and ignorance blind the fact that we live as a minority, and always will. Let it not blind us, for in such darkness we could lose all that was gained. The tragedy then would be that it was lost not heroically, but prosaically. Flippantly, laconically. We could lose our enlightened democracies because we could  amuse ourselves out of guard duty. Amused then to death. We could, too selfish to serve, destroy the thing that worked for our own best interests. Perhaps this is why democracy has always been in the minority. It is the thing which releases all talents, which release all benefits, which releases all selfishness, which releases all possibility, which releases all freedom, and therefore all chaos.

Yet if the autocrat, the tyrant, the totalitarian may collapse by a breath from Dionysus, democracy lets such winds pass through its Apollonian metric like wind over water. There is strength in democracy. There is a precious beauty in it too. And yet it will never be in the majority because it gives too much promise to too many. It treats everyone with dignity, when there isn't enough to share. This is a gloomy picture because history adumbrates that democracy is fragile. It is the best, and like the best wine, it is the most expensive and delicate. And also the rarest.

And so it is also a stubborn element too. We do not live by reason. And as long as Homo Sapiens is the dominant intelligence that statement won't change. Democracy is the most rational system, but it is in the minority. And yet reason is stubborn because although there are many different ways for greed or avarice or corruption to change, reason stays the same. It repeats. It comes back to the beginning. The allotropes of greed and fear, evolve only to greater entropy. Democracy is stubborn because it is built on defenses of truth, not on the lies of tyrannies whose aim is to exploit. Thus democracy is also beautiful. Truth be beauty, beauty truth.

Against the bitter winds of chaos, the democratic society can fortify with equanimity. Against the same winds, the tyranny only has force. That's because all tyranny is a state of force, where force is the centre, where the aim is not the best for the greatest number, but the maintenance of power. And in such states, the life of the individual is always subservient, power cannot co-exist with the right of the individual. Therefore, beware the justification of power for its own sake. Beware the excuse of maintaining order. Committee of Public Safety? There's one in China as there was in Robespierre's France.

Democracy threatens because by unleashing all talents, the ruling class cannot compete and so lose power. Since their state is based on power, if they lose it, their state crumbles. But democracy is based on the equal weight of voice, of vote, of power. Arguments are won by persuasion, not force. Power is distributed. Government is responsible. It is answerable. It can be renewed. It can be reformed. It can be removed. And yet Hitler was elected. Mussolini was elected. Mugabe was elected. Putin was elected. What are we to understand by the election of self-confessed anti-democrats? It can be understood by the following:

Democracy works only as well as the citizens are educated.

Only the ignorant can elect fascists. Only the stupid can vote against their own interests. Only a mass enthralled by trinkets, lucre, circuses, greed and fear can destroy the equality that maintains the state. By this way the society throws away a diamond only to clutch a piece of coal.

Therefore fortify yourself, fortify others. Defend our democracies, minority states in place and moment. Encourage education. Stimulate dialectic and debate. Energise the cynical, appeal to their heart. Never let anyone say the democracy is inferior. It is superior. It is superior to all other forms. The apathetic aren't lazy, they just don't understand the value of the jewel. Whisper to them the value.  Show them the life without the jewel. Let them see the jewel shine. And always be ready to fight against the lie for the lie is undemocratic. If the jewel belongs to everyone, everyone shines. If it belongs to one, to a few, it is shrouded in the deepest vault, among the most miserable of men.

Greed To The End

Greed and fear are allotropes of the same matter. And in the ancient lesson of greed and good, greed wins. And in the modern, it has proven itself time and again. Our brains make us slaves to greed and fools from fear. The hope of a sensible world is washed away in the rising waters of stupidity. Unleashed with technology, the human mind, the primitive mind, is a poor planetary trustee. What conceit it is to assume that 'all will be right'. That we won't destroy this planet or make it inhabitable. That we won't only collapse our own species, but condemn all life. That our insatiable industrial demand, controlled by greed, defended by fear, is the thing which is ending us. Ending. The Anthropocene is ending things. And the problem is our brains. They are too primitive to the task. They are shaped to throw spears at animals. They produce too much adrenaline and the neocortex is in the wrong place. If life could exist formless, intelligent without attachment to fear and the bipedal... but that's... that's... the dreamer's dream. The summa of hope. What chance? What hope?

And if so, we have to live with this primate body until then. With its contradictions and its charms. None of this would be so bad, except for the fact that we face an existential crisis in what we are doing to the environment. Fight! If the powers that are, refuse, then there can never been a more legitimate case for revolution. Greed destroying life, what further cause do you need. That has greater necessity than the revolts against George III and Louis XVI combined. And yet I am not an optimist. What is there to be the optimist for? Scarce little. Could we make it in time to take evolution into our own hands, we could be the ancestors to the answer. Yet I have little hope of our getting to that point. Because greed, and its complementary, fear, rule. They keep reason to ransom; logic to the sword. Unleashed on a universe heading towards entropy, are primitive brains, with the technology of destruction. What chance? What hope?

And yet sweet music, you play of hope. It is torture. Cease your strumming, unless it be a lament. Unless it sings of the endless folly of man and his gut desire for the destructive. Rise above the fear! Rise above it. There is nothing to fear! It cannot be a secret that there is nothing to fear. But who will believe it? Who will credit it? And yet you are right, music, in your sanguine sarabande. Each note leads on inevitable to the next. Once the first is played, it decides the last. Once an acorn seed is sown  it will only be an oak. The first to the next, to the next to the last. The first to the last. It is not predestination. It is nature. It is the law of cosmos.

And yet, oh how the human spirit dares! How it dreams! How, tenaciously it hopes. How it achieves victories when none seem possible! Could it be that that valiant creed, that hero's spirit defeats greed and fear? Oh, it can happen. It can. That spirit that channels through the ages, from the mind's ancient dreams to the wisdom of philosophy, it could yoke the primitive in its pen and the thinking brain could soar. Oh see it soar! See! Look what beauty in it's flight. See how its flight is delicate and light. Light. See how it dares. See the beauty.

But I am not hopeful.

Greed is a power that cannot check itself. Fear is a state that needs no reason. Through the strong vacuum of human forces, what right of the delicate, what chance for the best? Where can man swim to, bogged down by the drag of the ape? Where else but to the clutch of brothers. But what if those brothers kill? Fear wins. What if those brothers steal? Greed wins. What if those brothers give their life to others. Hope wins. Will you go to the stake for your position? Will you go to the stake for anything? But it's not likely. Martyrs are fools too. Intelligence is the ability to mock the primitive. Have no hesitation in that. And martyrs cannot mock themselves.

Yet the odds are not good. They are long that there is a future for the species. Was it always thus? Did the mediaeval priest think it was end of days? Yes. Has the eschatological existed before? Yes. But now marks a difference, because science tells current leads to catastrophe. Science! What can the thinking brain do? Built up on a history of success, what can it do?

The truth is, it is powerless to greed and fear. And the power of enlightened authority is over estimated. Thus the money-men rule. They will laugh like Bacchus, and sing like the pied piper, and the mass will follow them off the cliff. What is the philosopher to this stampede? And so there is no hope. There is no destiny for our species but annihilation and the destruction of life on earth. And, perhaps like the first note, it was inevitable. Perhaps it is inexorable. The only chance, and I'm no optimist, is that we take our evolution into our hands and make anew the species. Then wisdom may soar in beauteous flight. But...what chance? What hope?